Clarification to This Article
EDITOR'S NOTEA May 12 Style article on the prevalence of Ivy League degrees among Supreme Court justices used a quote from a 2005 column by Charles Krauthammer to suggest that Krauthammer, a Harvard alumnus, was disdainful of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers because her law degree did not come from an Ivy League school. Krauthammer did, as the article said, write: "The Supreme Court is an elite institution. It is not one of the 'popular' branches of government." Those words, however, were immediately preceded in the column by these:

"It will be argued that this criticism is elitist. But this is not about the Ivy League. The issue is not the venue of Miers's constitutional scholarship, experience and engagement. The issue is their nonexistence."

The article also incorrectly said that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was president of her class at Harvard Law School. She was a member of the Law Review editorial board, but she was not class president.

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Ivy has twirled itself around the marble columns of the Supreme Court like some smarty-pants weed. Over the past 25 years it has crept into the chamber and entwined every single justice's chair, except that of John Paul Stevens. But if Solicitor General and former Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan is confirmed by the Senate to replace him, the Ivy League's grip on the court will be complete: Every sitting justice will have attended either Yale or Harvard law schools.

Lady Justice: Your toga is stained crimson and littered with skulls and bones!

So much for public education, and boohoo for those of us who were rejected from, say, Columbia or, um, didn't even bother to apply to an Ivy because we have low self-esteem.

Granted, Ruth Bader Ginsburg got her JD from Columbia University, but only after she transferred from Harvard Law School (where she was president of her class) after two years. About half of the justices throughout history attended an Ivy League school. In the past 50 years, 64 percent of justices (18 out of 28) were educated at an Ivy. If Kagan is confirmed, the trend might as well become law.

The luster of an Ivy League degree became paramount after Ronald Reagan's failed 1987 nomination of Robert Bork, who was assailed for his outspoken right-leaning views on abortion, affirmative action and civil rights, according to Timothy P. O'Neill, a professor at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago. An Ivy League diploma, O'Neill says, has become shorthand for: This person is objective and scientific, and will come to the single best decision unswayed by personal bias.

"The Harvard and Yale pedigree became a way to defuse the ideological split," he says. "We know how powerful the court is -- now we have to pretend it exists above ideology. We have to get nine vestal virgins from Harvard or Yale. Brains trump ideology."

In the current climate, diversity of one kind (gender, racial or ethnic) seems to outweigh diversity of another (economic, geographic or experience outside the law). Gone are the days when a Supreme Court justice could be plucked from outside the East Coast, Ivy-centric ranks. In the '20s and '30s, Warren E. Burger combined a day job at an insurance agency with night school at St. Paul College of Law in Minnesota and went on to become chief justice. Sandra Day O'Connor was born, raised and educated west of the Mississippi. She grew up on an Arizona cattle ranch without electricity or running water, graduated from Stanford Law School and became the first female justice in 1981.

Lately, though, the lack of an Ivy League diploma can be seen as a deficiency. Former White House counsel Harriet Miers, who was nominated in 2005 by George W. Bush, received her law degree from Southern Methodist University. In the uproar that compelled Bush to withdraw her nomination, there was a whiff of disdain for her credentials.

"The Supreme Court is an elite institution," wrote Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer (a Harvard alum himself), calling for her withdrawal. "It is not one of the 'popular' branches of government."

The Ivy League's influence on the court has not been studied, but it has become a key part of a nominee's marketability, according to Lee Epstein, a professor at Northwestern University School of Law.

"We forget this because we talk about ideology all the time, but perception of qualifications matters so much," she says. "The public really thinks about 'Is this person qualified to be on the Supreme Court?' and that filters into the Senate's consideration. . . . I've heard it said that when somebody goes to Harvard Law School, when someone's the dean of Harvard Law School, it's like one hurdle overcome."